Compact discs are typically composite objects having a series of pits impressed into a plastic surface, usually during an injection molding process. These pits and the lands between them are arranged in a spiral pattern that can be tracked by a pickup laser beam which advances slowly along a radius of the disc while the disc is spun about an axis through the center of the disc. The pit/land surface is coated with a thin reflective metal layer. The pickup laser beam is reflected from the metal layer coating the pits and lands and the reflection is analyzed to observe the change in reflection intensity associated with a transition from a land to a pit or vice versa. To enhance the change in reflection intensity the wavelength of light is chosen to cause interference when the laser illuminates a pit. The interference occurs between laser light reflected from the bottom of a pit and light reflected from the areas outside the pits struck by the laser light. Therefore the wavelength of light is not chosen arbitrarily, but is typically related to the depth of the pits. An infrared wavelength of 780-790 nm in air (503-510 nm in polycarbonate where the index of refraction n=1.55) is often used. By detecting the change in reflection intensity, the length of the pit and or land as it passes under the pickup laser is sensed by photocells and is then interpreted by the CD player's electronics. Data is encoded onto the compact disc as varying lengths of the pits and lands. The data may be analog or digital data. For example a voltage level may correspond to a pit length in an analogue recording, or the length of the pits/lands may represent strings of 0's or 1's for the recording of digital data.
The amount of data that can be encoded onto a disc is limited by the density of pits and lands that can be accurately reproduced, for example by an injection molding procedure, and that can be accurately read by a photocell sensor system. Some error rate can be tolerated if the data is placed on the disc in a redundant format that allows errors to be recognized and corrected. Thus as the pits and lands are decreased in size it becomes necessary as a practical matter to provide greater redundancy in the data until a limit is reached in the amount of data that can be stored on the disc surface.
The conventional audio compact disc stored data that was readable from only one side, the other side being used to display a label over the surface of the disc. It has been known to utilize both surfaces of the compact disc to store data, thereby doubling the amount of data that can be stored. Double sided discs have been made by fabricated two half thickness compact discs and bonding them back to back. One drawback of such a product is that the disc must be removed from the player and inverted if there is only one pickup laser reading head within the player, or multiple reading heads must be provided. The present invention avoids the need for either multiple reading heads or disc inversion.